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It was a late night at the Capitol, as reporters tried to get the Cuomo administration to explain why they couldn’t talk about the details of legislative agreements despite the fact that budget bills were being printed. Asked if a deal had been struck, press aides would only say that they had no announcement to make on anything — which is, of course, a sentence but not an answer to the question.

But as the little hand on the clock approached 12, bills started going on lawmakers’ desks.

Among those introduced after midnight — and thus requiring a message of necessity in order to pass by the end of the current fiscal year on Monday — was the Education, Labor, Housing and Family Assistance bill popularly known as ELFA. It includes Cuomo’s $2.3 billion “Smart Schools” bond act, which can now be used for educational tech upgrades or the construction of pre-K facilities.

The absence of any sort of news release explaining the settled details of the package has left reporters and advocates combing through hundreds of digital pages of legislation seeking answers.

Based on an initial scroll through several of the bills, here’s what we know.

The Public Protection bill includes elements of Cuomo’s Public Trust Act, including the creation of a new Class E felony “Corrupting the Government,” defined as:

A SYSTEMATIC ONGOING COURSE OF CONDUCT WITH INTENT TO DEFRAUD THE STATE OR ONE OR MORE POLITICAL SUBDIVISIONS OF THE STATE OR ONE OR MORE GOVERNMENTAL INSTRUMENTALITIES WITHIN THE STATE TO OBTAIN PROPERTY, ACTUAL SERVICES OR OTHER RESOURCES, OR OBTAIN PROPERTY, ACTUAL SERVICES OR OTHER RESOURCES FROM THE STATE, OR ANY POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OR GOVERNMENTAL INSTRUMENTALITY OF THE STATE BY FALSE OR FRAUDULENT PRETENSES, REPRESENTATIONS OR PROMISES, AND THEREBY WRONGFULLY OBTAINS SUCH PROPERTY, ACTUAL SERVICES OR OTHER RESOURCES.

The same bill creates an independent enforcement unit within the state Board of Elections, but in a change makes that official’s appointment by the governor subject to the approval of both the Senate and the Assembly (only the Senate had that role in the original proposal).

And as predicted by your humble correspondent weeks ago, Cuomo’s initial proposal for a statewide system of public campaign financing has been whittled down from all statewide and legislative races to the race for Comptroller in 2014 — so get cracking, potential opt-in candidates!

Public Protection also details how the monies from the massive JPMorganChase mortagage-meltdown settlement will be apportioned — the topic of much debate between the Cuomo administration and AG Eric Schneiderman’s office in recent months.

Update: Here’s a full set of links to the full complement of budget bills:

State operationsLegislature and judiciaryGeneral debt serviceAid to localitiesCapital projectsA08555 Enacts into law major components of legislation necessary to implement the public protection and general government budget for the 2014-2015 state fiscal yearA08556 Enacts into law major components of legislation necessary to implement the education, labor, housing and family assistance budget for the 2014-2015 state fiscal yearS06358 Enacts into law major components of legislation necessary to implement the state health and mental hygiene budget for the 2014-2015 state fiscal yearA08559 Enacts into law major components of legislation necessary to implement the revenue budget for the 2014-2015 state fiscal yearS06357 Enacts into law major components of legislation necessary to implement the transportation, economic development and environmental conservation budget for the 2014-2015 state fiscal year

Thank you for the update and including a message to MC’s We appreciate you staying on top of this and your support. Please let us know asap and if the outcome is the same as it has been for 6 years, and if it is we need you to ask the Governor why MC’s are treated differently from other state workers….we need reporters to stand up and put him on the spot and find out why we don’t deserve equal pay for equal work…..thank you!

If the M/C issue isn’t addressed I am ready to leave NYS. How much abuse can one group take. If you heard that everyone at a large company was going to receive regular raises with the exception of one group (Lets say black employees in this example) there would be an outcry from every civil rights organization, the public and the media. Now in place of black employees substitute M/C employees. That is exactly what is occurring to M/C employees. Everyone receives raises except M/C’s. It has been a long 6 years without a raise. This needs to be fixed now. M/C employees are not asking for anything more than our union counterparts have received. We just want to be treated equally.

M/C’s have been treated like garbage for 6 years. Let’s see if Cuomo and our politicians have the integrity to correct this issue. Cuomo preaches about women’s rights and equal pay for equal work, it is now time for him to practice what he preaches. He also told M/C’s that this whole M/C pay mess was going to be addressed in the budget. Let’s see if he is a man of his word.

The bad thing about education, I think you could give education every single dollar from the budget and we would still hear that it is not enough. It is time that school districts to consolidate around the state. I live in a small town and yet we have 5 school districts. Way too much overhead and we hear from superintendents that if we consolidate we will lose our identity. The only thing the superintendents would lose is there job because we wouldn’t need so many.

If Cuomo does turn his back on MC’s, he needs to be held accountable and asked tough questions. The media needs to find out why he hates MC’s. Why he is bullying and singling M/C workers is beyond comprehension. MC employees by whole are very dedicated. I put in so many extra hours and bring work home to ensure that my department can provide the services that NY’s deserve.

There most likely will be no MC Commission in the budget and its a fact that there will be no 2% increase for MC’s on April 1 folks in OSC were told to issue no bulletin to agencies to effect the 2% but there are bulletins for all the represented groups. This is a Reiter/Schwartz/Cuomo decision….MC’s should take this to the streets , there will be nothing done till something awfully ugly happens unfortunately…this is an outrage and simply because politically MC’s do not matter to these people and in fact most people do not matter to these people….Casey/Odato/Karlin: You guys should stay all over this MC story, do some foiling for gosh sakes…. its a classic example of the cynicism, paranoia and control that typifies management of the Executive branch under Andrew Cuomo.

Sharron- He is not a man of his word, he is a lawyer. His words were chosen very carefully and crafted to say nothing. However they were so well composed that they gave the intended impression that he was actually planning to address the problem. Many people misinterpreted what exactly Cuomo said about addressing the pay disparity in the context of the budget. He said this is what SHOULD happen; he never said it was going to happen. He also did not say when, if ever, it would happen. Why would he “resolve” anything for MC this year when he won’t deal with the unions until next year? Nothing will happen before then.

Another thing many people don’t get: this issue is less about the raise and more about fairness. Sure it’s terrible that MC’s have had no raise in six years, but to me that is a less important point than the fact that everyone else who works for the state has had a raise but MC. The uninformed masses complain that MC’s are asking for raises when they in the public sector have not had one, but how many people would work in a job where everyone else gets increases in their pay but them? It’s about fairness first before income.

Thanks for the update on the MC situation. I will remain delusionally hopeful a bit longer before they knock the air back out of me.

Be prepared… MCs will be in rare form next week. If the DOB bulletin regarding MC steps and the 2% increase doesn’t arrive by Thursday, we can assume that they’ve been withheld. These withholdings, combined with the expected lack of action in the 2014-15 Budget, will cause a virtual riot on CapCon. You’ve been warned.

I don’t see anything about M/C’s in the budget. I guess the gov bullied the legislature and told them to remove it from the budget. Let’s wait to see an update on the OMCE website. I know Joe Sano and Barbabra Zaron are staying on top of this. Thanks so much to them for their help. If there’s nothing for us in this budget get out there and vote out every senator, assemblyman and most importantly Gov Cuomo. Every state employee needs to vote out everyone in the state legislature! Two more years in NY and I’m outta here!

I’ve been checking the web all morning. Is there still no news regarding inclusion of M/C salary restoration? Frankly, OMCE should have been up all nite working the phones. What’s Silver’s position – did he ever respond to the public plea for M/Cs? It appears there is more support from Republicans than Dems. Not surprising – State workers have always been treated badly by Democratic governors. I had to laugh the other day – an email about Deferred Compensation Program. I think we MCs were auto-enrolled in that.

“A SYSTEMATIC ONGOING COURSE OF CONDUCT WITH INTENT TO DEFRAUD THE STATE OR ONE OR MORE POLITICAL SUBDIVISIONS OF THE STATE OR ONE OR MORE GOVERNMENTAL INSTRUMENTALITIES WITHIN THE STATE TO OBTAIN PROPERTY, ACTUAL SERVICES OR OTHER RESOURCES, OR OBTAIN PROPERTY, ACTUAL SERVICES OR OTHER RESOURCES FROM THE STATE, OR ANY POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OR GOVERNMENTAL INSTRUMENTALITY OF THE STATE BY FALSE OR FRAUDULENT PRETENSES, REPRESENTATIONS OR PROMISES, AND THEREBY WRONGFULLY OBTAINS SUCH PROPERTY, ACTUAL SERVICES OR OTHER RESOURCES.”
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I don’t think most of us were so much worried about the pols bilking the State, and this is a knee jerk reaction to the Scarborough raids, hastily thrown in for appearances. Where are the sections on kickbacks, sweetheart deals, customized contracts and bills that we see for major donors, and all of the coincidently convenient campaign contributions that seem to follow every TA-DA action that Kuomo works out for his favorite issues, ala casino gambling? This doesn’t even amount to a band-aid on the gushing flow of corruption. Business as usual.

When will we see an accurate and complete analysis of this turkey? If there were Nobel Prizes for verbosity, our government minions would win hands down. Well maybe, contracts may have them beat, as they want it as hard as possible to make sense enough to detect the criminality in a lot of them.

Reiter/Schwartz – Fran Reiter is a political appointee favor that should be fired immediately. She was a failure as the head of NYC & Company, a failure as the Public Theatre Exec Director and how someone gave her a job in the gov office is one big mystery. If you fire her you can give some people a raise. This women is unemployable on so many level. Schwartz on the other hand has no sympathy to the working class at all and is out of touch with the everyday worker. Someone tell me also how Empire State Development has been approved to hire more political appointees – where did the budget come for this? Something really unethical going on right now in the HR Dept. of ESD and the 2nd floor.

Cuomo’s “Public Trust Act” should be called the “Supreme act of Hypocrisy.”

Has the Governor not engaged in…
“A SYSTEMATIC ONGOING COURSE OF CONDUCT WITH INTENT TO DEFRAUD… OBTAIN…ACTUAL SERVICES…BY FALSE OR FRAUDULENT PRETENSES, REPRESENTATIONS OR PROMISES, AND THEREBY WRONGFULLY OBTAINS SUCH PROPERTY, ACTUAL SERVICES OR OTHER RESOURCES.”
He doesn’t “hate” MCs. It’s not personal because we are not people – just expendable dinosaurs.He withholds our wages because HE CAN,the same reason people always do bad things.He is out to destroy the merit based CS system by replacing legitimate MCs with politically connected sycophants who never took a civil service test in their lives. I think DeFrancisco’s bill rotted on the floor of the Pension Committee. Why haven’t we heard from him?

M/C’s stiffed again? No surprise. Like father, like son. The governor just doesn’t like state employees. But I bet more than half of all M/C’s still vote for him. Maybe Thomas Frank can write a book about it.

I think all of these supposed “supporters” in the legislature with the exception of DeFrancisco because he keeps tabling the issue, were just opportunists looking for re-election votes. There never was a chance that they were going to actually fight for us, and the M/C issues was literally the last thing on Shelly’s mind. He could care less. As someone mentioned previously, we are not people to the Governor or the legislatures. We are chess pieces, and mere pawns at that. The M/C’ s in civil service management positions are the Target of the governor. He is trying to starve them out to make more room for his “Fellows”. Once he has gotten the majority of these positions filled with his hand picked people then the raises will come. Unfortunately for those not in management positions in M/C are cannon fodder for this battle to circumvent and destroy the civil service process. His hand picked commissioners will be much more efficient in carrying out the dictators missives when he also has Gand picked managers throughout the chain of command. This is all about positions 70-75k and above because that us the starting salary of the “Fellows” . Once they are gone untold riches and benefits will befall the M/C’s because once he has HIS people in place he will right this great wrong publicly and loudly. The media has to ask the questions, this matter has to get out to the public, and more importantly we must vote this man out and all of those who have failed to support us. As for the unions, I will not gloat, I will not rub it in, and I will not be mean when the governor uses this to justify reducing your salaries. I will simply remain silent as you have in this fight. Thanks for nothing.

The Prince declares an on-time budget but who represents the average Joe or Jane? This is not representative government, it is what we learned in school that repressive non-democratic governments imposed upon their citizens.

Casey, I am fairly sure that if budget bills are printed and put on the desks of members on Saturday by 11:59 PM, they would still be able to be passed on Monday. Saturday (even 11:59 is considered a full day) would then count as one of the 3 days and Monday would be the 3rd day, so I’m pretty sure as long as all budget bills are printed by midnight tonight, they can be voted on Monday WITHOUT a message of necessity.

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